The most helpful favourable review

The most helpful critical review

70 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 starsaction aplenty with something for the brain and heart too
For readers new to le Carre(and there can't be many)this is the third of what has become known as the "karla series".The previous two being "tinker,tailor,soldier, spy" and the herioc and romantic "honorable schoolboy"(highly reccomended too).The third sees much of the same cast collected again.You meet clever and dodgy Toby Esterhazy,the...

3.0 out of 5 starsThey left bits out!
This is John Le Carré reading from his brilliant book "Smiley's People". I know the book well, and have read it many times. Having enjoyed other recordings of Le Carré reading of his own work, I was looking forward to this. However I was disappointed. The work has been truncated to quite a great extent: chunks of original text are missing, and lots of the...

This is the third book in Le Carré's Karla Trilogy (along with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy). An émigré, General Vladimir, living in London and an opponent of the Soviet Government, tries to get in touch with George Smiley. He claims to have vital information that he can only share with his old contact. When Vladimir is found shot the intelligence service calls Smiley out of retirement to try to sort out the mess. Vladimir is now considered to be of little importance and they want the whole thing hushed up and swept under the carpet.

Gradually a very complex plot unfolds that seems to lead back to Karla - one of USSR's intelligence chiefs. The apparently acetic Karla seems to have had a mistress and a daughter. The daughter is believed to have mental or psychological problems and has been placed in a home in Switzerland. Smiley begins to believe that he could use this information to coax Karla out of Russia and into the arms of British Intelligence.

The plot is actually much more complex than that and the reader has to hang on for dear life to keep up! But it is worth the effort. Once again Le Carré really scores when he writes interrogation scenes. Nothing is rushed. Smiley sometimes appears only half interested in the answers given but will gently (no shouting, no water-boarding) return to his previous questions for further clarification. Poor Grigoriev - he didn't stand a chance!

We are kept on tenterhooks right up to the end. Who will be triumphant? Karla or Smiley? Or perhaps neither........

The final book of the trilogy. I had watched the BBC dramatisation first which was excellent (I thought Gary Oldman was fantastic as George Smiley in last years film 'Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy' but not in the same league as Alex Guiness in the BBC dramas). Reading the book, at a slower pace than watching the tv drama, I appreciated so much more the subtleties of the plot. There is a poignant irony to the iniquitous Karla being destroyed by the one small chink in his armour; the small remnant of his humanity.....his paternal love for his daughter.